Description

Southern pine cooperative breeding programs currently emphasize genetic improvement of growth rates. When a deployment population, typically a seed orchard, is established, there is an opportunity to emphasize traits other than growth rate to maximize the profit of individual cooperators in the breeding program. The authors studied a southeast Texas breeding population and developed selection indexes to optimize profits for Kraft and mechanical pulp mills. The relative economic weights for volume and wood density were 1:8.1 and 1:8.6 for Kraft and mechanical pulp mills, respectively. Choosing parents with these indexes increased expected profit per ton of dry pulp by 3.4 percent for both mill types. Expected gains in profit were 3.3 percent when parents were chosen based on wood density alone. If parents were chosen based solely on volume growth, expected gains in profit were only 0.3 to 0.4 percent